15:34 Ilosaari, the musical oasis

Part of my assignment this year has been to look at the Finnish musical festival culture from an outside perspective.

One of the most notable aspects of this and seemingly many other Finnish rock festivals is their popularity.

For instance, Ilosaari has an attendance of around twenty thousand people in a town of only fifty-two thousand. It's hard to imagine a festival in the US that would attract that kind of a crowd relative to the size of the town. This popularity, of course, owes partly to the quality and diversity of the talent that performs at Ilosaarirock.

But another aspect of it, pointed out to me by a native Finnish friend, is that Joensuu rarely gets the bigger music talent the rest of the year.  This unfortunate fact is usually attributed to the crippling downsizing of the local rock music club Kerubi, which was forced out of its formerly spacious digs near the market square a few years ago. The loss of Kerubi as the main driving force for bringing in musical talent has forced a sort of drought of live performance. And Ilosaari, then, is like an oasis of music at which Finns can, finally, sate their thirst for live music.

Here at Ilosaarirock, amidst the drunken shenanigans, sunburns, and the ceaseless booms of amplified bass drums wafting in from afar on the lake breeze, one gets a sense that Finns have been saving up all the sex, drugs, and rock and roll for one big blast in the summer. This pattern of dearth and overabundance, a very mirror of the Finnish climate, is lamented by quite a few people during the winter months, but at least now you're guaranteed to have fun in the summer.

-- Kochun 'Kossunen' Hu
Pic: Matti Immonen

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